


let's be more than this (we'll be a legend tonight)

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, and i flail, clara and the doctor save each other from themselves, i have become way too emotionally invested in this ship, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 03:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Just remember, Clara, to treasure every page."</p><p>(or the one where Clara and the Doctor save each other from themselves)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's be more than this (we'll be a legend tonight)

Clara has a lot of books on the shelf above her bed, but only one has blank pages in it. It’s barely written in, but it’s the first thing she thinks to grab when the Doctor tells her to come along into his magic blue space box.

 

_Penelope left me today, and it felt like something I should be writing down. Since Mum died, it’s like my life breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces until in the end it’s just me left._

 

Sometimes she leaves dates.

 

_So when the Doctor came along it was the most unbelievable thing in the world. A ticket to run and not have to look back for a long time. It’s like living a dream._

 

But after she makes a home in the TARDIS, the pages lose numbers and all the adventures seem to blend into a great long memory of adrenaline and a happiness she hasn’t felt in a long time.

 

The Doctor tells her of his old friends, the ones with their own books and stories. “They’re gone now,” he says, but with only a little bit of regret. “Just remember, Clara, to treasure every page.”

 

She nods furiously in the middle of scribbling down her sentences, because there’s so much she’s seen and done she can’t bear the thought of forgetting. A few times, when she actually gets to sleep in the TARDIS (and they’re not busy hopping straight to the morning), she flips through her book and smiles when she reads and remembers.

 

+++

 

“You might have just saved my life,” she tells him.

 

He grins gigantic and silly and, “saving you might have been what saved me. Thank you. And you’re welcome, I guess.”

 

It takes her by surprise because it’s been so long since she’s been thanked, and when the Doctor hears this he looks at her incredulously.

 

“The incredible, impossible Clara. Who wouldn’t be amazed by you?”

 

“A lot of people,” she says, thinking of all the friends who’ve come and gone and how her parents never stayed and how she seems to be stuck in one part of her life forever.

 

“They’re wrong,” says the Doctor. He pushes a lever and suddenly they’re going to see the Roman Empire, and she thinks ( _write this down later_ , she tells herself sternly) to herself that this is what’s worth living for.

 

+++

 

“You’re the only mystery worth solving,” says the Doctor dreamily. “You’re what I’m living for right now, Clara.”

 

She knows there are things he’s not telling her, but it’s like a game they play. They don’t know each other very well but they get swept up in good, dangerous times anyway and epic endeavors are had by all.

 

+++

 

He sends her back one day and makes her fix things with Penelope, who he says is a lovely girl and they “shouldn’t just let each other go like that. You have to do it properly. God knows I’ve had enough problems with that before.”

 

She doesn’t know what that means, but she trembles pushing the doorbell at Penelope’s flat (where they’d lived together once, for about three weeks before she had to go to the Maitlands). They sit and share tea and say sorry, and have conversation that’s not as heartbreaking that she’d thought it would be. They kiss as a mutual apology and say goodbye, and it’s like—she’s cured herself of her own disease, or something equally commendable. Clara manages to get down the concrete steps and over to where the Doctor and the TARDIS are waiting for her on the sidewalk, and her eyes well up and she thanks him. She can feel his arms wrap around her, surprised, when she clings to him so tightly for saving her again.

 

Her laughs get muffled in the material of his coat, and he sets her down and they walk (she’s almost bouncing) to a bar somewhere.

 

“I hate to see you young people all moping and depressed,” he says, refusing to touch the booze that’s been set in front of him. “Isn’t it my job to do that?”

 

She gives him a look. “Doctor, stop diagnosing yourself with sadness,” she says, which is a thing she’s taken to repeating around him a lot lately. It annoys him, but it reminds him to be happy again, so she’s smug because it works.

 

She takes his hand and makes him dance with her, and they both think it’s pretty perfect even though he steps on her feet and she gets bumped into and falls onto him a lot. It’s funny how clumsy they are, but they always end up catching each other.

 

Clara keeps drinking, which is probably not the best idea for her considering how small she is. The Doctor has to end up as her crutch on their way back to the TARDIS. Even drunk, she smiles at him when he tucks her into bed—he leaves her clothes on, because he’s a thousand years old but still mindful—and says, “Don’t be sad, Doctor.”

 

“It’s hard to be with you here.” He kisses her forehead. When he pulls away, he sees that her eyes are closed and shuts the door behind him.

 

+++

 

She meets the Doctor’s friends—not the old ones, but the ones who helped him before her—and they look at her like she’s more than an ordinary human.

 

Later, when the Doctor is busy conferring with Vastra and Strax, Jenny tells her that the Doctor would have died if he hadn’t found her. He’d been in a long, long recluse after the last ones he’d lost, so the universe decided to thrust them together like a stellar collision. Clara thinks of binary stars, and how they revolve around each other and sometimes exchange mass when one of them is dying out. Primary stars and companion stars that shine together.

 

He comes back to the two of them talking quietly to each other and asks if they’re conspiring against him.

 

“We would never do that.” He kisses her on the head in a familiar motion and pulls her under his arm. When Jenny smiles knowingly at them, her chest lights up and she feels alive.

 

“I’m living a story with him,” she tells Jenny. “We’ve taken every cliché and broken them and it’s the most satisfying feeling to be changing things and—not being useless.”

 

+++

 

Clara acquires a lot of money traveling with the Doctor, and her joy is exponential on the day she gets to leave the Maitland household and get her own flat.

 

She loves Angie and Artie, but moving out is like finally getting her own life and being more than just a piece of something else.

 

+++

 

They do a lot of running but they only do it together. While they’re racing through the cold stony halls of some castle in France, they get trapped in a corridor by blue fish-reptile-creatures about to gun them down and she has never seen the Doctor more livid.

 

“Leave us alone!” he shouts, and from his voice she feels the terror that everyone in the universe felt when they spoke of the Doctor of legend. “We have no quarrel with you, and as long as you don’t disturb the humans living here we never will.”

 

Still, the aliens pull up their weapons, and Clara is shoving her head out one of the arched windows, looking to see if they can jump or find a ledge.

 

There’s a door jutting out of the enormous wall, maybe twelve feet below, and Clara yanks the Doctor out of the way just as the colored bullets are being fired. They crackle with a foreign electricity when they clatter to the ground.

 

There won’t be any problems getting down, but there’s only room enough for one of them. This isn’t much of an issue, either. “Doctor, run. Jump.” She forces him onto the sill and points at the platform below them. “Find the TARDIS and come back for me, okay? I’ll wait for you.”

 

He looks at her like she’s insane, and his face smolders with anger. “You can’t just sacrifice yourself for me.”  His expression is hard, even with the wind bringing his hair and his clothes to life. Clara shudders in it.

 

“Yeah? Watch me. I can’t pilot the TARDIS, and you know that.”

 

He’s wondering why she’s not afraid of him. She rolls her eyes and gives him another push as he blue things appear behind her, her breath snagging when the weapons are pointed in her face.

 

She hears his thump as he lands. They’re still far above the ground, and the TARDIS is parked on the hill by the lake, but she trusts him to get back in time.

 

Clara swings into the window to her left and races down the hallway. There’s an immeasurable amount of staircases in the building, so if she finds the right one, she’ll make it back to the entrance before they do.

 

Her head is just a mantra of orders for herself; making sure she doesn’t trip or end up in a dead corridor. Her panting gets heavier and she can hear thumping footsteps on the stairs above her head, so she hopes with her life that she won’t burst out the door to find an absent police box.

 

Maybe she jinxes herself, because even though she ends up ahead of the primitive-looking beings, the huge wooden doors are stuck and she has to slam herself into them to get out. Clara’s pretty sure she bruises her entire right arm in the process.

 

She’s kneeling on her scrapes while the still-unnamed things point their guns at her, so she takes a deep breath and covers her head with shaking arms and says, “I’m waiting, Doctor,” and

 

the whoosh of the TARDIS fills her ears and the bullet fire is muffled by the impermeable door.

 

The Doctor helps her up and they fix her injuries and he tells her sternly, “Don’t do that again,” with the most admiring look on his face. She beams at him.

 

Afterwards, when she’s finished sleeping and recovering from all of the action—all of the _running_ , though it’ll never be tiresome, they sit on a couch in a warm, homey TV room with tea and macaroni and they watch movies together.

 

She feels like she belongs. Later, when filling out more of her book, she writes, “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The last quote that Clara writes in her book is taken from Galileo.
> 
> The part of the title in parentheses is taken from the song Outlines by All Time Low, which was a major inspiration/help when writing this song. Other songs that influenced me while writing this include:  
> Lullabies (All Time Low),  
> Crash (You Me At Six),  
> Demons (Imagine Dragons)  
> Why Am I The One (fun.)  
> and You be the anchor... (Mayday Parade). 
> 
> Insight: the line "his face smolders his anger" is taken from I line I wrote somewhere that goes "your face smolders, livid like the ember in the dying fire that cannot win against the night." I was told it fits the Doctor's attitude towards the stubbornness of some of his companions. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
